What is in Shadow Work: Journal
Becoming a Shadow Hunter
Hunting your shadow is a term and idea that found me some 3 years after first hearing the term “Shadow”. Like many, I was initially quite perplexed by this idea, but at some time later than that, relieved. The darkness I sometimes experienced isn’t personal, far from it in fact, and I may not be the devil I sometimes thought myself to be.
Or is it that I rather may be, but I am also equivalently the light? I am balanced. However only when I release the need to be one or the other. So rather helpfully, the shadow is a darkness that follows you, always changing based on your relative position to the light. Far from black and white, the shadow lives in a grey area and allows us to see and learn a lot about our internal world.
The shadow is the holder, for our “Sex and Life Instincts” as defined by Swiss psychotherapist Carl Jung. It sits in our unconscious mind, away from where and what we usually think about. It is all of our repressed ideas, weaknesses, desires, instincts, and shortcomings. The parts we light to keep away from our light of consciousness. This is created as a result of us seeking to adapt to our environment, cultural norms, and societal standards. It is a container oftentimes concealing emotions like anger, fear, shame, grief, painful memories, or wounds of historical trauma. When I first heard about this, I agreed with the first term, to hunt it.
To find a way to rid myself of the delusion and darkness. I have continuously come to find that the delusion is thinking polarizing toward it and seeking to find a way to destroy what is simply a natural occurrence. So instead I began to realize that a more important piece to the puzzle is to dive into the connection within self. To remove the overgeneralizing view of the ego, which polarizes and looks overtly at the idea of black and white. To begin, at first, simply allow me to see my shadow (For the instant I can, as it immediately changes and morphs).
This led me to an interesting dance within myself, a continuous chaotic waltz as I learned how to step to and fro. Keeping count and pace as long as I could, until, sooner or later, I was thrown awash, completely caught off guard by some looming level of work I didn’t see coming.
Furthermore, this internal piece is not naturally hostile, it, like most parts of our psychic body, simply seeks connection and acknowledgment. Should these needs be met, then it is a functional part of the ecosystem and seeks to continue to serve the whole. Should it be ignored, it soon starts to create a great level of fuss, why should it exist, but to allow you to see parts that you may otherwise be ignoring?
Neuropsychotherapist Britt Frank, in her book The Science of Stuck, echoes this sentiment. She emphasizes that therapy or inner work isn't about changing oneself but about knowing oneself and conducting an inner orchestra with skill and compassion. Frank calls it a daring quest to explore every corner of one's inner world.
Building a conscious relationship with your shadow parts – this is shadow work.
So now comes the meat of the matter. How does one do that? This is fair and only to prompting these days as we live in a day and age where people on TikTok will share these prompts, ways to look inside, and really begin a journey into our own selves. This journey may feel like quite a difficult path to undertake, and rightfully it is, especially in the beginning. It can be treacherous, uncomfortable, and difficult. This means you may be doing something right.
The shadows are the parts we have actively chosen to keep separate from ourselves, so as we begin to look at them, shining our light of consciousness on them, all those repressed emotions begin to surface, and we are left looking at them, directly. Purely from a logical point of view, this seems uncomfortable, you have zero desensitization to these aspects, so they scream, shout, and kick. This goes on for what feels like a good while, almost unbearably long. Again this way we know we are doing something right.
How then can these parts be engaged in a manner that they can begin to be integrated without almost falling into the deep darkness to which they are home? Some of the best answers I have found are compassion, patience, non-attachment, non-judgment, and non-reactivity.
To allow the moment in which they arise and to slowly tread forward. Piece by piece. Remembering that this too shall pass. Oh and let yourself have something nice, like hot chocolate, to know that you can prepare for these journeys by bringing some of the sweet things of life with you. A key to shadow work is to go into it prepared, it is going to be difficult, it is going to bring these things to the surface, that you have been avoiding, that are difficult to look at. So let yourself armor up, compassionately, so that you can emerge with the gold from the dragons' lair.
Put Me In Coach
So we have an idea of what, or where our shadow exists, we know how to safely enter into this space, well parts and pieces that are important to keep in mind and focus. Now how do we actually enter these places? Where does my Shadow hang out? Would it be in a dark alley? Corner of my cupboard? How do I find it, if it keeps avoiding my awareness?
Well, there is the beautiful thing about the shadow, the relationship we have with it. We may struggle to see the shadow directly, but we are able to recognize the patterns around us. Hence journaling is a great way toward beginning to see how it plays out in our lives. As we are taking our experience and now laying it out and down in front of us, as a means of exploring, as well as seeing our own way of life. This works as we begin to put the pieces together, and over time draw up a fairly large, and expanding, map of our own life. The trick with this practice is to do it earnestly for the experience itself, to completely go into the journey for experiencing the journey, removing yourself from the outcome. This in itself is a process, which initially is a bit difficult to dive into. From this initial space, we begin to grow, we begin to find the way that we are able to move forward. As we allow the space to fall, for ourselves to rise, we slowly start to embrace everything we have been moving with. The patterns start to become clear, we start to see a clearer way, a way that is now free of much of the resistance we were previously holding onto.
This is a magic that arises when we do things earnestly, to the best of our ability, and we start to slowly allow ourselves to unfurl, to connect to our internal guidance. There is a certain type of completeness that begins to arise from this space of simply being. The space where we are so used to hiding, becomes a form of playfulness, as we truly allow ourselves.
It is in this space that we may reflect and learn to move more wholly through the experience we are having. Which is in its own way a form of shadow work. I do however want to clarify, that simply writing, is only step one, it is taking the time to acknowledge, observe, and reflect on what has been written and how it makes you feel. This is the magic moment of reflection which allows us to see the shadow that is hidden behind us.
The magic comes in the process of doing it, and earnestly so. To look back on this process is then when we completely immerse ourselves and learn. Applying these learnings is the next step. No secret formula or incantation. The simplicity of it is where most tend to be misled. We live in a world where surely it must be an almost impossible piece to put it all together and learn how to better move in the world we live in. Application, to receive a seed and to plant it. Nurture it step by step along the way, learning throughout the process and being willing to fail.
We live in a society, hyperfocused on success, but seems to be removed from the fact that, success requires failure. Truly, this is a tried and tested system, we know that in order to succeed, we need to know how to fail. To be completely unafraid of this fact, and in fact to be willing to show up to and for it. Knowing that it is a part of the process of becoming all that you ever wished to be and more.
Birthing the Journal of Shadows
So start, today, with whatever you have available, as what makes this journal right, is that you dive into yourself, is not the paper it is made from, nor the pen it is written with. It is you sharing your internal reality. So start where you are, with what you have, and do what you can. Then reflect on it and allow the process to unfold. Shadow work is an important part of getting to know yourself and one that is very much worth the discomfort.
